OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14506059
C.F. HOECKEL COMPANY
DENVER, CO·
Event description
Employee dies after expose to benzene for 30 years
Investigation abstract
For 30 years, Employee #1 was a pen-ruler for a custom print shop. During this t n the premises for years had no hazard warning and no monitoring had been conduc ted to determine employee exposure. Employee #1 was diagnosed as having aplastic anemia on January 27, 1988. He died on April 11, 1988. The autopsy indicated th at benzene exposure was related to his death. ime, he used AZO dyes and aniline-based dyes for the line inks that produce mult i-colored, lined, and margined paper for county ledgers and other specialty orde rs. The two hard wood pen ruling machines were built around the early 1900s and had no other identifying labels. Employee #1 used benzene, alcohol, and other so lvents to perform cleaning operations and to ensure proper pen flow. He did not use gloves and often used a spray mist cleaner that contained benzene. In the ar ea where Employee #1 worked there was no local exhaust ventilation and he was ne ver trained on the hazards of benzene. A drum containing benzene that had been o
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 51 M
- Nature of injury
- 22
- Part of body
- 25
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 9
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 16
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Hazardous substance
- 0320
- Task assigned
- 1
Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.